The use of a roller guide assembly displaced along a ground rail to guide road vehicles constitutes the ideal urban traffic solution for public transportation road vehicles.
The applicant has invented a unit for guidance along a single guide rail embedded in the ground having two angled rollers applied to the guide rail by a preconstrained force. The performance of this invention is beneficial not only, from the point of view of speed, but also quietness and dependability.
Guide rails embedded into the ground are located in public areas and often the hollow linear grooves formed on either side of the guide rail act as receptacles for the most diverse objects, which may cause operating malfunctions and even lead to derailment.
Other objects obstruct the guide rail by their mere presence across or along the track. The items may consist of various objects ranging from traffic accident debris to lost or abandoned items.
It is also possible for ice to be present in one or more of the grooves extending along the rail, which may constitute a serious obstacle to guidance in the wintertime. Hereinafter, ice will be considered to be an object or an obstacle, or debris in the case of shattered ice.
To prevent derailments caused by objects and debris obstructing the guide rail or lodging in the lateral space or spaces forming in the one or more grooves located along the guide rail, two principal means of evacuating or ejecting debris have already been provided.
The first one is a protective device called a guard iron or “cowcatcher” which generally functions by pushing away objects located on the guide rail.
The second one is a material used to partially fill one or more grooves. This material has elastic properties so it can either retain small objects forced down inside, and possibly becoming encrusted inside as the passing the guide rollers exert pressure, or in some cases, eject them by bouncing them off after the rollers have passed.
However, the fact remains that certain objects blocking the path cause the guide rollers to lift appreciably, which can lead to derailment.